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| Location | Marion, Illinois |
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| Coordinates | 37°39′47″N 88°59′3″W / 37.66306°N 88.98417°W |
| Status | Operational |
| Security class | Medium |
| Capacity | 1,000 |
| Opened | 1963 |
| Managed by | Federal Bureau of Prisons |
The United States Penitentiary is a former supermax prison, located in Marion, Illinois. It was built in 1963 to replace the Alcatraz prison in San Francisco, which closed the same year. According to Carl Sifakis, author of The Encyclopedia of American Prisons (New York, NY:Facts on File, Inc., 2003), "Amnesty International has categorized it as inhumane" (156).
Contents |
History
Opened in 1963, Marion became the United States' highest security prison by 1978.[1] The facility became the nation's first control unit when violence forced a long-term lockdown in 1983.
Marion was one of two supermax prisons in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the other being ADX Florence in Colorado. The prison was originally constructed to hold 500 inmates. In 1968, a behavior modification program was implemented, called Control and Rehabilitation Effort, or CARE. Inmates placed in CARE wound up either in solitary confinement, or were subjected to "group therapy", which involved psychological sessions.
On October 22, 1983, two prison guards, Merle E. Clutts and Robert L. Hoffman, were killed in separate incidents, both at the hands of Aryan Brotherhood members.[2] Clutts was stabbed by Thomas Silverstein.[3] The prison was, at the time, the holding place for the Federal Bureau of Prisons' most dangerous prisoners. Despite this, two inmates were able independently to kill their accompanying guards. Relatively lax security procedures allowed a prisoner, while walking down a hall, to turn to the side and approach a particular cell. An accomplice would subsequently unlock his handcuffs with a stolen key and provide him with a knife.
As a result of the incident, the prison in Marion went into "permanent lockdown," and was completely transformed into a "control unit" prison. This penal construction and operation theory, since named supermax (a portmanteau of super and maximum) calls for the keeping of inmates in solitary confinement between twenty-two and twenty-three hours each day, and does not allow congregate dining, exercising, or religious services. These practices were used as administrative measures to keep prisoners under control.
Communication Management Unit
Although the supermax facility is gone, The United States Penitentiary at Marion is now home to one of two known "Communication Management Units" in the federal prison system.[4] The other is at the Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, Indiana. The units severely restrict the visitation rights for inmates and monitor all telephone calls and mail. Most of the inmates are Arab Muslims. The prison also houses Daniel McGowan, serving seven years for involvement in two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given "terrorism enhancements" as authorized by the US Patriot act.[5]
The Federal Bureau of Prisons created the Communication Management Unit (CMU) in response to criticism that it had not been adequately monitoring the communications of prisoners. "By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency's capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing," according to the Bureau's summary of the CMU.[6] An ACLU law suit charges that CMUs of the federal prisons violates inmates' rights.[7] In a Democracy Now interview on June 25 2009, animal rights activist Andrew Stepanian talks about being jailed at the CMU. Stepanian is believed to be the first prisoner released from a CMU.[8]
The prison
The prison is located approximately nine miles south of Marion, which is roughly 330 miles (530 km) south of Chicago. Permanent lockdown, where prisoners remain in their cells 23 hours a day with little to no human contact, began in 1983 and ended in 2006, when the prison began extensive renovations as a medium security prison. The renovations increased Marion's inmate population from 383 to 900. [9] The majority of the inmates housed at Marion are weapons and drug offenders.
Besides the better known former supermax penitentiary, the facility also houses a minimum security work camp as well.
Gotti's cell
Sifakis describes John Gotti's cell in The Encyclopedia of American Prisons: "Confined in maximum security since his imprisonment in 1992, Gotti could be said to have been in total isolation, with only a few visits from his family members and his attorneys. Kept in an 8-by-7-feet underground cell for 22 to 23 hours a day, he knew many of the other closely confined inmates such as Scarfo and Coonan, as well as many other mob inmates, but he never saw them in prison. With reports of cancer ailments, he was assigned no work, no communal recreation. His food was delivered through a slot in the cell door. His cell contained no more than a single cot, a basin, a toilet, and a black-and-white TV. It was said he did not even get a chair on which to sit. To avoid spending all his time supine on his cot, Gotti folded his mattress into an L shape, which he propped against a wall to simulate a chair" (156-157).
Famous inmates
- Carlos Lehder (1949- ) - Medellin Cartel Co-Founder
- Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino (1962- ) - American Mobster and boss of Philadelphia Crime Family
- Leroy Antonio "Nicky" Barnes (1933- ) - former drug lord of Harlem
- Christopher John Boyce (1953- ) - Soviet spy
- Ed Brown - (current) New Hampshire tax evader and protester
- James Coonan (1946- ) - former leader of the "Westies" street gang, which operated in Hell's Kitchen, NYC
- William Daddano, Sr. (1912-1975) - favored "middle manager" in the Chicago Outfit
- Clayton Fountain(1955-2004) Murdered correctional officer Robert L.Hoffman at USP Marion October 22 1983.
- John Gotti (1940-2002) - American mobster and head of the Gambino crime family.
- Christopher Jeburk (1975?- ) - prison escapee and bank robber
- Chevie Kehoe (1973- ) - murderer and white supremacist
- Tom Manning - United Freedom Front militant and left-wing extremist
- Leonard Peltier (1944- ) - Native American activist (incarcerated at Marion June 1, 1977-1985)
- Jonathan Pollard (1954- ) - Israeli spy (incarcerated 1986-1993, then transferred to FCI Butner)
- Pete Rose (1941- ) - athlete charged with filing false income tax returns (incarcerated from August 8, 1990, through January 7, 1991)
- Nicodemo Scarfo (1929-) - former Philadelphia crime boss transferred to federal prison in Georgia, until 2033
- Thomas Silverstein (1952- ) - murderer and Aryan Brotherhood leader
- Garrett Brock Trapnell (1938-1993) - skyjacker, bank robber, and con man
- Manuel Noriega (1934- ) - former Panamanian general and dictator
- John Anthony Walker (1937- ) - Soviet spy
References
- ^ ""Control Unit Prisons"". University of Massachusetts. http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/ceml_articles/cu_in_us.html. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- ^ ""Fallen Heroes"". United States Federal Bureau of Prisons. http://www.bop.gov/about/history/heroes.jsp. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- ^ ""America's Most Dangerous Prisoner?"". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1393970.stm. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- ^ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-mcgowan/tales-from-inside-the-us_b_212632.html
- ^ http://www.supportdaniel.org/faq/
- ^ Washington Post, February 2007 Facility holding terrorism inmates limits communication
- ^ LA Times, June 2009 ACLU to challenge isolation prisons
- ^ Democracy Now interview
- ^ Hunsperger, Kevin. "Marion Prison Tours". WSIL TV. http://www.wsiltv.com/p/news_details.php?newsID=1560&type=local. Retrieved 2008-03-24.
External links
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